Festivity and Robots
by SamCyberCat
Summary: Chris gets festive ideas to hold a Christmas party and enlists the help of Orbot and Cubot. Sonic X/SEGA Sonic AU.


Notes: Written for part of a trade with GitzyRulz on deviantART in exchange for some merchandise. Based on an AU she's created, where Chris Thorndyke is actually the son of Eggman. If you have any questions about the specifics of this AU, you'd best direct them to her, as I probably won't be able to answer them.

* * *

There were two things that Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik liked very much in life. Those things were control and ownership.

His desire for control came from a lack of trust in the control that everyone else had. He lived in a society where his grandfather, Gerald, was violently murdered for the advances he made in the field of science, where presidential figures sat around just watching their world crumble, never lifting a finger to use the power they apparently had, and where the species who referred to themselves as mobians had the gall to form their own societies, as if they deserved the same rights that the human race has. And nobody stopped them.

Except for Eggman.

Well, it was a work in progress, really. He tried very hard to put a stop to them, but time after time was thwarted by their champion, Sonic the Hedgehog.

But the bottom line was that Eggman felt that if he was in control, he could do a much better job of it than the people who were currently in control. As he knew what was best for the world.

This was what led to his second desire, ownership. Because to have control, he needed to own what required controlling. In this case, society. Eggman wanted, more than anything, to own society.

However, he was ultimately just one person, very aware of the fact that with each passing day his life span grew ever shorter. Ownership was only temporary and while he may eventually be able to control society for the rest of his life, once that life was over the world would descend back into the chaos that it had come from without his guidance.

The only way that he could prevent this, would be to create a successor who would carry on his ideals.

Admittedly, he wasn't much in favour of the monarchy logic – that said successor had to be a child of his own creation. He'd learned about monarchies when he was younger and had seen the foolish mistakes that had been made by putting someone on a throne simply because they were your next of kin.

As far as Eggman was concerned, a successor to him had to be someone who had proven they had the same skills and motives as he possessed.

This was a huge a setback, however, as time demonstrated that the world was surprisingly lacking in people who shared either of these things. Or even sympathised with him at all, for that matter.

So he fell back on the notion that in order to have a better chance of finding someone like him, he should attempt to create that person using his own genes.

Eggman knew that this wasn't a foolproof plan, that there was every chance that even with his genetics the child might end up nothing like him. But every day reminded him that he wasn't getting any younger. If he truly wanted his rule to carry on, then he had to act.

And so he did.

Over a long, gruelling process of forging through many failed attempts, Eggman managed to create a child of his own. Not via the normal means, of course. This was him, after all. No, there'd be no way that he could ever convince someone of the opposite gender to even spend time with him, let alone agree to carry his child. So he had, as always, turned to the labs.

The genetic experiments he performed were unlikely to be at all legal. But then, being illegal was usually the starting point of anything he was doing anyway. The law wasn't even a minor setback to him.

It hadn't been as simple as making one of his many robots would have been. Creating a human life was not as easy in a scientific as it was to do so by the other means. All together, Eggman counted twelve failures before he managed to put together something that was acceptably alive.

…Acceptably his son, for that matter.

The child was named Christopher Robotnik, though this quickly became shortened to Chris during his upbringing. Not that Eggman had much concern for his upbringing, however. As he still had his own legacy to create and little time to stop to care for a child. There'd be no point to having a successor if there was nothing for him to inherit.

Thankfully, there were many robots of his own creation around the base to care for the child in his steed. Most frequently, the young boy would be looked after by some variation of four robots – Bocoe, Decoe, Orbot and Cubot. They mostly came in pairs, as when Bocoe and Decoe were looking after Chris, Orbot and Cubot would be helping Eggman in one of his schemes, or vice versa.

When the years went by and Chris turned into a young man, Eggman's fears were realised and the boy resembled him in no way. He had the same interest in robotics that his father did and their hair colour matched, but that was about as far as the similarities went. While Eggman was trying to stamp out inferior beings that the humans had mistakenly accepted into their society, Chris was busy befriending the various robots that hung around the base. It was as if he felt the metallic contraptions were people with actual feelings that were worthy of his time. Ludicrous, if you asked Eggman.

What Eggman didn't stop to think was that Chris turning out this way may have largely been his own fault. It was to be expected that being raised entirely by robots would make the boy feel an attachment towards them. The only other human that Chris had even met outside of the occasional visits from his father were the rare times he managed to sneak out of the base and meet up with another young boy called Danny.

Danny and his tales of the outside world fascinated Chris. He would look forward to meeting up with him to hear new stories about the humans and sometimes about the mobians, too. Being no fool, however, he kept his trips to see Danny down to a minimum. Chris knew that if Eggman ever found out that another person had discovered Chris's existence, that person wouldn't be breathing for very much longer. It wasn't a fate that Chris wanted to curse upon his friend.

On one such occasion that Chris had snuck back into the base after meeting up with Danny, his head was full of ideas based on the stories he'd heard. Not that this was particularly unusual, but this time he was determined to act upon those ideas.

"Christmas is just around the corner," Chris pointed out, after having found his two current robot caretakers, Orbot and Cubot, in one of the rooms. They never questioned where he went when he disappeared. Chris liked to pretend it was because they were sympathetic, but he knew that in truth they probably just didn't think that he could get out of the base even if he tried.

"The change in temperature would indicate that, yes," Orbot agreed, from where he was filing away a selection of failed voice chips that had been previously used on his companion.

"What do you guys think of it?" asked Chris.

"Oh, I love Christmas! Can't get enough of it! Lots of flashy lights going blink, blink, blink, and tinny music chiming all over the city," cooed Cubot.

Out of all of the robots, Chris secretly thought that he liked Cubot best. Many of them had been programmed with unique personalities to fit whatever Eggman felt that they needed to be, but Cubot was the only one who really had a sense of fun. The others found Cubot to be an annoyance, but Chris liked that he was always enthusiastic about any suggestion and seemed to look at life as if he truly enjoyed it.

"We do get time off on that day…" muttered Orbot.

In contrast to his excitable partner, Orbot was level-headed, smart-mouthed and rarely too eager about anything. He'd learned from watching Cubot's punishments that the man who created them did not like unexpected outbursts, so he made sure that he was about as expected and calm as possible, to stay out of the line of fire. He could not, however, prevent the sarcastic streak that he'd been programmed with from surfacing frequently. But thankfully that didn't seem to lead him to much harm.

"You must look forward to it," Chris commented.

"Well, I do like having some free time to fix up my joints and make sure they're in working condition," Orbot agreed.

"If he doesn't do that then he gets rusty," laughed Cubot.

"I most certainly do not!" Orbot huffed.

"Don't be mad, Cue, I'm sure he didn't mean it," Chris cut in, not wanting the talk to derail into a fight, "Um, what I wanted to say is that I heard from- …I heard that people often do nice things for Christmas. Like throw parties and give each other presents."

Cubot sighed wistfully; "I do like having me a good party. You should see me when I get my dance moves on."

"Yes, but the boss doesn't make do with that sort of thing," reminded Orbot, "It'd be a waste of time and finance as far as he's concerned."

"Maybe that's just because he never gets invited to any parties," Cubot teased.

"If we threw a party here, we could invite him," pressed Chris, "Maybe… maybe that would make him cheer up a bit."

Orbot liked Chris, he really did, but there were times when he just wanted to tell him to take a look at his father and see the awful person who was actually there.

"I think you might be setting yourself up for disappointment there," he said, tactfully.

Chris nodded; "You might be right. But even if he doesn't like it, I'd love to hold a party for you guys."

"But why?" asked Orbot, "We're just robots."

"Hey! Don't shoot the kid down if he wants to throw us a really wild party!" protested Cubot.

"I'm not sure it'd be wild," Chris chuckled, "But you've all taken such good care of me that I want a way to say thank you."

"There's no need to thank us," insisted Orbot.

"I want to be thanked!" Cubot huffed.

Yes, but that's because you've been programmed that way, Orbot thought. One day, the boss might grow tired of you and program you a different way, so that you don't respond so well to gratitude.

"You don't have to help me," Chris mumbled, "But if you could just come to the party, I'd be really glad."

"How could you say no to a face like that?" demanded Cubot, glaring at his companion.

Orbot sighed. He'd say that he was a bleeding heart, if he even had a heart.

"Very well. Since we're not doing anything on Christmas, I'm sure that we can attend," he concluded.

"And help out, too," pressed Cubot, "I could be the DJ if you like. Back in the day they used to call me DJ MacCube and I'd scratch up all those discs like a pro."

"No one ever called you that," said Orbot.

"Well, they will do after this party. Now come on Chris, we've got a lot to do," Cubot replied, putting an arm around the young boy.

"Thank you! I knew that you'd help out," cheered Chris, grinning.

"We always do," Orbot observed. He was beginning to wonder if Eggman had programmed them that way.

So the three of them got to work. Finding the space wasn't difficult, as the base was so big that Eggman had allocated various rooms for Chris's use. Mostly they were to keep him out from under his father's nose, but right now they served as a handy location for Chris's party to be hosted. He certainly wasted none of the space he'd been provided with, covering every inch of it with festive decorations.

"I've downloaded any information I could find about Christmas design," said Orbot, quite proudly, "Ask me anything you want to know about Christmas trees, reindeers or chestnuts roasting on an open fire and I'll be able to give you an answer."

"All right then, where do we get some chestnuts to roast on an open fire?" asked Cubot.

"Don't be ridiculous," Orbot protested, "The good doctor would never let us have an open fire in the base. Too much risk to all the hardware. Thankfully, we won't need one, as I've already got some chestnuts ordered."

"You're certainly good at this," Chris called down from the ladder he was using to attach tinsel streamers to the ceiling.

"Organisation is one of my many talents," boasted Orbot.

"Bragging is another," Cubot replied.

"Quiet, you!" growled Orbot.

"There'll be no fighting at my party," Chris warned, jumping down from the ladders.

"You're the boss, boss," saluted Cubot, "Well, not really. Eggman's the boss. But you're the boss when he's not the boss, if that makes sense."

"It does," hummed Chris. He was used to Cubot's babbling, "So when do we get started on the tree?"

Orbot answered, "Within the next few minutes, I believe. It's just been delivered and I've had some of the service 'bots erect it in the tallest room you've got access too. Pretty soon it'll be ready to be covered in baubles and tinsel."

"And a star on top?" Chris added, wide-eyed. He'd definitely heard Danny talk about how you had to have a star or an angel on top of a Christmas tree. Since he didn't think that his father would approve of an angel, he'd opted to go for the star.

"You can put the star on the tree yourself," answered Orbot.

"Thanks! You're the best!" Chris cried, taking hold of the robot in a tight hug.

"I do try," replied Orbot, patting him gingerly on the back.

Watching the boy decorate his own Christmas party was more rewarding than Orbot would ever admit to. Chris was a talented lad, but most of that talent ended up being directed towards learning robotics and asking question after unanswered question about what life was like outside. He needed an outlet for his imagination and something like planning a party was perfect for this.

The three of them chatted away as the tree was decorated. Naturally, Cubot and Chris were the most talkative, but often Orbot would also end up being dragged into the conversation through arguing with Cubot.

"The others are going to love this," Chris said, reaching up so that he could place the star at the top of the tree, "I can't wait to see their faces when they arrive."

"Would they look something like that?" queried Cubot.

He gestured towards the door, where Bocoe and Decoe had turned up, loitering awkwardly as they waited to be noticed.

"Guys, you're back early!" called Chris, "But that's okay, it's never too early to start a Christmas party."

"Christmas party?" Decoe echoed, before adding, "I'm afraid that we don't have time for something like that."

"Why not?" asked Chris, face dropping ever so slightly.

"We didn't want to be the one to tell you this, but Eggman's got plans for Christmas. He says that Christmas is a time that no one would expect him to attack, so everyone's defences will be down. There's no way he could pass up a chance like that," replied Bocoe.

"Oh…" Chris murmured.

"It's all hands on deck, of course," Bocoe went on, "Though Orbot and Cubot will be required to stay here and look after you."

"That's okay, they don't have to," Chris replied.

"Nah, we want to," assured Cubot, "Much rather spend time with you than watch the old man get his behind handed to him by Sonic for the millionth time."

"He wouldn't like to hear you talk in such a way," Decoe cautioned.

Cubot made a rasping noise; "Does he ever even come here to hear what we have to say about him?" he then felt a nudge from Orbot's elbow and realised that hadn't been very sensitive towards Chris's plans with that particular line, "Oh, um, what I meant was that… well, he does come here sometimes, but since he's busy he… probably won't be here right now?"

"You don't have to say things just to spare my feelings," Chris said, smiling weakly.

"I see we might have come at a bad time," Decoe cut in, "So, if you'll excuse us, we'll be making our way back to the boss now. Lots to be done."

"The place looks nice though," assured Bocoe, before following his partner robot out.

After exchanging glances, Orbot and Cubot looked at Chris.

"Are you all right?" Cubot asked.

"I'm… I'm fine," answered Chris, putting on his best brave face.

"Sorry that your party didn't go the way you wanted," Orbot said.

Chris shook his head; "It's not a problem. Really. We can keep the decorations up until they're finished with this plan so they can all see them when they get back. And I had so much fun working with you guys today that really that's all that matters."

"You're a very optimistic person," said Orbot.

Cubot patted Chris on the back, saying, "Anytime you want our help arranging a party, just ask. We'll always be able to make time for you. Unless we're helping Eggman, that is."

"He does always come first," Chris agreed. Part of him wished that he would come first, just once, but he'd been brought up to know that wasn't how life worked.

In a rare moment of spontaneity, Orbot suggested, "And there's nothing saying that we couldn't have our own party, just for the three of us. I'm sure that the chestnuts have got here by now and it'd be a shame for them to go to waste."

"Nothing goes to waste with you guys around. Thank you," Chris replied, grabbing them both into a hug. While receiving hugs wasn't all that unusual from Eggman's affectionate son, something about this one felt different. Like it was filled with the sort of gratitude that a child would have for their parents.

But perhaps Orbot was thinking too much about it to think that he could even feel anything in the first place.

"Aw, this is nice," said Cubot, "The family together."

Sometimes, Orbot wished that he'd been programmed more like Cubot and could just accept things as they came.

"Yes," he agreed, "This is nice."

The rest of the day was spent doing all of the festive activities that Danny had told Chris about, though only with the three of them. If Chris was at all disappointed about how the party had gone, he didn't let onto it and seemed happy enough just to spend time with even just two of his robot guardians.

Maybe one day they'd be programmed not to care about him anymore, Chris knew, but for the moment they were his family. And they were the best family that a boy could ever wish for.

That was all he wanted for Christmas.


End file.
